The summer learning got off to a great start when Elissa Katz, Shira Teichman, Rhona Flaumenhaft, Sabrina Bernath along with seven other Frisch faculty members attending the ISTE 2015 conference in Philadelphia at the end of June. The annual three day conference is the the singlest largest edtech gathering of teachers and vendors in the country. From large ( 400+) lecture sessions to small group settings in the Playground section, Frisch math teachers learned from expert in the field of educational technology and pedagogy. Besides several hundred daily sessions on blended learning, flipped classrooms, real time assessment to choose from, teachers walked the Expo floor to learn about the latest software and apps in the marketplace. It was an exhausting and inspiring trip that each one of us walked away from with many new and exciting ideas. We can wait to try out all that we learned.
Here is a photo of Rabbi Pittinsky, Director of Educational Technology, Dr.Mindy Furman, Head of the Science Department, Rifki Silverman, Head of Engineering, Ahuva Mantell, Head of the Arts Program, and Rhona Flaumenhaft, math department faculty member up late at night learning how to set up Twitter accounts.
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| Frisch Faculty collaborating and learning into the night. |
A week after ISTE, Frisch math faculty member Elissa Katz was yet again back in school learning. She attended a week long College Board summer session on AP Statistics at Fordham University. Besides learning the recent changes to the exam, Elissa was given a chance to relearn many ideas from her graduate studies in Statistics with the benefit of newer and more advance technology. She said the teacher and course were "amazing". Here is a cute picture of her working hard in one of the sessions.
A highlight of the Frisch calendar for teachers is actually August when Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, the Director of Educational Technology, runs his one of kind Technology Boot Camp. His month long schedule of progressive and innovative sessions are highly anticipated each year as teachers look forward to learning from a recognized expert in the world of edtech.
This past Monday, six members of the Frisch math department met with Rabbi Pittinsky to learn about and explore Educanon and Formative. Educanon is a web based tool which allows a teacher to create a virtual worksheet for a preexisting video. Rather than ask questions about the content discussed in the film at the end, Educanon pauses the video and allows the teacher to ask multiple choice, fill in the blank, and free response questions which it then grades and records the results on a teacher dashboard. It is a powerful tool to assess student's learning. Formative is an online formative assessment tool. By giving your students' a class code, students and their device of choice are automatically entered into your "online classroom". All work they perform with their device is visible to the teacher on their iPad or laptop. With a choir of "oh" and "ahs" as the two programs were demoed, both Educanon and Formative will be sure to be utilized in your child's math classroom this Fall.
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| Mrs. Teichman demos Formative to members of the Math Department. |
With so much excitement building about the upcoming school year, the math department is eager to get things started. It is going to be a great year and we look forward to working with your child soon!
